Reshaping civilization: liberalism between assimilation and cultural genocide

Abstract

The 20th century has not been one for Occidentals to be proud of, when you think of the aspirations of Western liberals at its outset, the efforts directed at all manner of progress and improvement, and how much so many millions of people have ended up suffering, and continue to suffer, at each other=s hands. The management of violence in all its diverse forms is arguably a problem of similar significance in the year 2001 as it was in 1901 - or 1801, 1501. It could be said that it has simply become more complex and differentiated. In addition, since 10 November 1989, roughly, there has been a striking shift in the way Western nations, states and peoples reflect back on the normative dimensions of their past history. Concepts like >reparation=, >restitution= and >reconciliation= have taken on new resonances, and observers like Elazar Barkan (2000) remark on a new and growing collective desire, largely but not only among Occidentals, to rethink history in ways which redress a range of past injustices. The idea of >restorative justice= (Strang & Braithwaite 2001), then, is one which applies not only to contemporary problems such as the relationship between perpetrators and victims of crime, it also gets stretched across time to encompass historical injustices (Gordon 1996) which have come to be seen as such because their cognitive frames have shifted. This normative rethinking of the past is, however, hotly contested, resulting from deep-seated disagreement about whether and how such conceptual reframing of history is to take place. The argument I would like to aim for here is that in order to work our way through these disputes intelligently, as well as addressing the fundamental issues underlying the experiences of historical injustice, it is important to engage - more systematically than we have so far - with our understanding of the idea of >civilization=. There seems to be little hesitation to mobilise varying conceptions of >barbarism= in reference to events, actions and forms of social organization we regard as immoral, unjust, cruel, inhumane or oppressive, but barbarism=s implied converse, civilization, leads a much more troubled existence, especially among social and political theorists and researchers. This same contrast can be seen in relation to the other issue taking a central place in European Australian=s rethinking of the history of their relations with Aboriginal people: the removal of Aboriginal children. Both the practice itself and the subsequent critique of that practice rely heavily on the concept of >civilization= to legitimate themselves. There was seen to be a sort of isomorphism between the approach to land and to family life; just as Aborigines were seen as bereft to rights to land because they did not cultivate it, and thus >uncivilized=, so too were they seen as bereft of rights to their own children, because they did not >cultivate= them into a form of civilization recognizable to Europeans (Dorsett 1995). Just as it was the duty of Europeans to cultivate the land to its maximum capacity, so too it was their duty to >cultivate=, educate Aboriginal children to their >maximum= capacity, that is, as assimilated and Europeanised. Civilized society is, in this usage, exactly what Aborigines are not part of, and it was this exclusion which supported the denial of their access to full citizenship, apparently leaving unchallenged the broader conceptions of egalitarianism and equity on which Australian national identity was supposed to rest. But, again, the critique of Aboriginal child removal which has emerged over recent decades also presents itself as informed by the appropriate degree of civility, and the earlier administrators and officials as characterized by a barbarism which current generations should condemn as an example of cultural genocide. The kinds of question that this paper addresses, then, include: What do the various policies and practices surrounding the removal of Indigenous children tell us about the inner workings of liberal rationalities of government, and what do changes in those rationalities in turn tell us about our current retrospective understanding of those policies and practices? How can the history of Indigenous child removal illuminate both the peculiarities of governance under settler-colonialism and underlying features of liberal rationalities of government more generally? Show more